happy coffee trees have good haircuts · Thursday February 5, 2009 by colin newell
Tropical vegetation growth is steady year round – if one species has a dormant month, there’s another one ready to take its space immediately. For a tropical farmer it means a never-ending battle against nature taking control: cutting, weeding, whacking, clearing, ripping, mowing, pruning, breaking, picking. Vastly different than in the temperate climate zone where distinct seasons allow, even demand, more organized work.
What’s called ‘pruning season’ in Kona coffee land is actually a matter of life and death for the trees. A coffee tree can kill itself by overbearing, and our region is known for producing the highest amount per tree and the largest beans anywhere in the world. So in this very unique, more than ideal Kona coffee tree climate one doesn’t destroy, but creates by cutting things off.
The last beans are picked, pulped, dried and securely packed away in the storage rooms to age for a few months. The trees look literally wasted – many branches are stripped of leaves, sporting barren, broken twigs, a few forgotten coffee cherries dangling somewhere at the top, mostly dried up to what we call ‘raisins’. New green shots sprout on those old, bent over, spent arms. If left to themselves, cultivated kona typica trees will soon return to be tall, wild unsightly shrubs with lots of new wood, but little coffee to harvest from.
It’s the way a tree grows on its own and a coffee farmer tries to tame this very nature year round to make it behave ‘unnatural’; meaning giving more fruit than it would need to produce to help its species survival.
Not much different from a vintner or apple orchard owner: The plant should conclude that it’s best to produce as many fruits as possible. Every year. We farmers fool them into thinking that there is an abundance of fertile space, water and right amount of sun around, by carefully pruning, fertilizing, watering and adjusting shade trees. Keeping the right bugs around and the wrong ones away. Protecting the soil from erosion and the winds from breaking its branches. Bringing in beehives to pollinate or even observing moon phases to up the yields in spiritual ways, if one is so inclined. All comes down to that if the tree is happy, you’ll harvest some very, very happy coffee beans from it.
When I walk out there to trim the old branches from our 2,500 trees it’s the dry season in Kona. Sunny days from dusk to dawn with barely a gentle breeze. None of the usual afternoon clouds rising from the ocean along the slopes of the Mauna Loa volcano. One wants to catch the first light at 6 AM till about 10 when it gets really hot. And after 4PM till 6 when it cools down again. Because it is hard work, and it needs careful, concentrated examination of each trees’ unique constellation of branches: Which ones to cut and which ones not to. Then a short burst of energy with a very sharp handsaw to cut the 3” wide, about 5‘ long old or withered branches off. Selecting one or two new shoots, which should not be damaged by the saw blade. The other ones are being broken off at the base, or ‘suckered’ as they call it here. Then it needs dragging the cutoff branches out to the nearest path, two or three at a time, mostly uphill over rocky terrain. Stumbling, cursing, getting scratched, a tad more cursing. Piling them up where the wood chipper can reach them easily.
After ten trees, twenty or so branches one is drenched in sweat. Then it gets nasty with the crab spiders, which love to spin their orbs in this season. And they cling to a sweaty neck or forehead when dragging the branches out. Short legged arachnids they are, their pea size bodies accumulate mostly underneath ones shirt collar. Where they decide to bite you. Somewhere in pain level between a mosquito and a bee; but no visible redness or swelling. Those come from the spider mites, which fall down from the top of the dried branches and itch for days after having burrowed into your skin.
In a while the tangled mess of the post harvest orchard opens up and one can see the spacing of the trees, the beautiful, shy kalij pheasants running around, find a forgotten wooden picking hook from the harvest season, an empty burlap bag which was never filled with coffee cherries, slowly deteriorating in the rains.
On a good day I prune and sucker about hundred trees. And drag, pile up the branches where the chipper can get to it. Then my concentration wanes and I make mistakes by cutting off a wrong branch, or missing a few. The beauty of farm life is that there’s always something else to be done, screaming for attention, a different muscle to use, a different way to focus, or something stupid or repetitive activity for a change. Should I deal with HTML code on our website or the jeeps transmission fluid problem? Mow the lawn or prep the soil analysis for the Ag Service lab?
A well-pruned coffee tree gives an optimum amount of coffee cherries. It utilizes the air and space surrounding the leaves and branches fully. Pruning is to understand the inherent architecture, the metabolism of the tree; foreseeing the next few month’s growth and the next 2 year’s direction a branch will take; helping bent over branches to steady themselves by weaving them into the adjacent twigs. The thick gnarly, many times altered stump of an old growth Kona coffee tree is a piece of art in itself. A tree cut back over 120 pruning seasons simply is a bonsai piece in its own way: Full of cuts, swellings, holes, stumps, twirls and turns – a symphony in wood. They say ‘form follows function’, here the function is shaped by forming, shaping the growth. A coffee tree is pruned at knee height, from where the branches are easily bendable towards the pickers during harvest. The first generations of Japanese Kona coffee farmers preferred climbing on ladders and let the verticals grow up to 10, 15 meters. Accidents by toppling down with a thirty pound basket of coffee cherry strapped to the waste was common. It’s not a cushiony fall on Kona lava rocks and an hours worth of work is spilled between the dirt, stones and leaves. Those days on the ladder are gone thanks to more finessed pruning methods their children developed when they took over the farms. It still isn’t easy labor, but looking at a happy, smiling coffee tree sporting it’s new seasonal hair, err… ‘branch’ cut is very much so.
Joachim Oster is a coffee farmer and owner (with his lovely wife Demetria and daughter Athena…) of Blue Horse Kona Coffee Farm in Kealakekua, Hawaii (near Captain Cook). His writing will periodically grace the pages of the CoffeeCrew Blog – and for that we are eternally grateful!
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Nod to the Great Canadian Blog - Clean Hot and Dry · Wednesday February 4, 2009 by colin newell
If I never blogged another sentence about coffee culture, specialty coffee and the pop culture associated with the scene in the North-west…
I certainly would not be missed. Especially when there are spot-on blogs like Clean Hot Dry
Like the Jim Seven blog, Clean Hot Dry brings home the reality of the sheer sexiness of the coffee scene in Vancouver – the life and times of the baristi in Vancouver – and Clean Hot Dry speaks to the best of the best across Canada and America.
And when I return to Vancouver for a week in June, I am going to have my work cut out for me getting caught up – of course I will have the assistance of my two key associates there; Dave and Theresa.
Anyway Clean Hot Dry reduces the essence of the Vancouver coffee scene to a sweet, sweet ristretto stream of consciousness – I love it and I think you will too.
In other thoughts, I am thinking of finally abandoning the multi-threaded theme of this website; coffee, food, rants, miscellany – and just focusing on Coffee and Food Culture in the Northwest.
If there are any objections, raise them now in the comment fields.
Click on the above image for the full photizzle…
Colin Newell is a Victoria resident and writer of words… his search for the perfect cup of coffee is on going
Bonus blog - things that make me steam · Monday February 2, 2009 by colin newell
Picture at left – a portion of my ham shack – the receivers – one of which used to be used to pick up an actual Sputnik satellite (upper left Radio Shack DX150B circa 1973)!
From the Canadian wire and on Global TV news today…
Four Toronto college students have accomplished a technological feat that their teachers are calling a first. The Humber College seniors made contact with the International Space Station on Monday with a radio system they designed and built themselves.
School officials say that, to their knowledge, that’s never been accomplished by students at the college level.
These school officials have;
never used an internet search engine…
have never researched an article…
and have been living under a skull crushing pile of gravel for the duration of their miserable lives…
Hello. Has anyone ever heard of Amateur Radio? Ham radio as it is also called is a hobby enjoyed by about 1 million people Worldwide.
And thousands of student radio operators, if not tens of thousands of student radio operators (at various high-school, college and University amateur radio clubs…) have enjoyed the thrill of radio contact with orbital space craft, shuttles, space stations etc.
I am one of those people. My call sign is VA7WWV.
My first radio conversation, prior to actually having my own license, was as an 11 year old conversing with a rescue mission in Managua, Nicaragua after the 1972 earthquake that killed 5,000 of the 400,000 population, leaving 20,000 injured and over 250,000 homeless.
And as for space communications… We have been doing it since Skylab, every shuttle since, the Mir space station and the current international space station.
And to the good folks at Humber College…
Do your homework!
The World around us - in crisis - Ed Begley Junior · Saturday January 31, 2009 by colin newell
I write and talk about Cafe culture and my life with coffee – it is a niche area that has been good for me and hopefully good for people that actually work in the industry… like the farmers and their families… and even a cafe or two.
But it is not something that is going to net me a huge audience that would fill an auditorium and get me round after round of ovation and accolade.
Because it’s coffee – and although millions drink it and love it… It isn’t Earth shattering.
Ed Begley Jr. talks about the environment and sustainability – the path we are on – the crisis that we are in – and the actual real tangible hope that is before us.
We saw Ed Begley Jr. at the University of Victoria Center auditorium tonight and he made sense. Sure he was preaching to the converted – like Andrea and I… and our dear friend Sheila. But I am sure there were one or two cynics in the crowd. I mean, I sure hope so. Because a converted cynic in hand is worth two converts in the bush…
Whatever the heck that means.
Anyway. I wish Ed would come to coffee one day because I share a table in our cafe with a couple of anti-global warming bobble-heads. That is, they hear an AM talk-show host say that there is no global-warming or environmental crisis… and they believe it without question.
Ed’s message is simple: “Don’t listen to me. Don’t listen to the Sierra Club. Don’t listen to AM radio or the Right Wing media.
No. Pick something you trust… like National Geographic… or someone with a Phd after their name… like a University professor who actually knows what she or he is talking about – and at least listen”
Ed’s the voice of reason. So we listened to him. And although we kind of are already on that sustainable – environmental bandwagon, there is a lot more that we can do for the Planet.
Ed also says… “Do not listen to the message about not being able to afford change or afford the environment…”
The message is: We cannot afford not to listen.
Ed speaks in a compelling way, without being too preachy – giving real World practical examples about how everyone can do their part – however small.
Anyway – do yourself a favor and check this guy out if you can – or visit his website.
Postscript – thanks for the e-mail Ed! Appreciated.
